


Waldeinsamkeit

by WritingQuill



Series: Meanings [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: After John, Before John, Gen, Loneliness, POV Third Person, Sherlock's POV, Sherlock-centric, a study of friendship, pre-slash if you look really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingQuill/pseuds/WritingQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waldeinsamkeit (German): the feeling of being alone in the woods</p><p>
  <i>It was a strange feeling, not being alone anymore. Sure, he’d always been surrounded by people, but he’d never not felt like didn’t belong. But with John it was like he had a place. John accepted him and accommodated him in a way that was entirely novel to Sherlock.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waldeinsamkeit

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of a stretch with this one, but hopefully you'll enjoy it. It's a bit of how things went before John came around, and then afterwards.

**Waldeinsamkeit** (German): _feeling of being alone in the woods_

***

It was the darkest hour before dawn and the wind blew cold. The leaves flew about most likely contaminating evidence — important evidence that stupid Anderson forgot to gather — and the heavy drops of rain started to make their appearance. Soon, they’d all be soaked to their bones, if the blackness of the clouds was any indication of how heavy the rain was going to be. 

Sherlock Holmes sniffed the victim’s wrist. Twenty-seven year-old accountant. She had short brown hair and dead blue eyes. Although the “dead” bit was most likely attributed to her present condition. Dead, that is. She was a nail-biter, due to her oral fixation. Engaged, but having an affair with a woman. So far, so obvious. Sherlock gathered his personal evidence — the kind that allowed him to make his deductions, but wouldn’t hold up in court because they were all a bunch of imbeciles — and stood up, facing Lestrade. He began describing his thoughts on the murder of the young woman. She had been hit on the back of the head with a blunt object, no sign of struggle or sexual assault. She hadn’t been murdered in the woods, Sherlock told Lestrade, which, again, was terribly obvious — and rather tedious, but he owed Lestrade a favour, and it was always best to get those out of the way as soon as possible. 

As soon as he was finished, Lestrade went to talk to his young Sergeant, a young woman named Sally Donovan who hated Sherlock immediately. Sherlock stood there next to the body, feeling strangely awkward. He felt… lonely. Even surrounded by people, Sherlock often felt alone, utterly lonely, lacking. He would return to his flat at Montague Street after solving a case and fall asleep on the sofa due to exhaustion without even bothering to change or eat. He didn’t care that he was alone, of course, but sometimes that irritating little feeling lingered, and it showed Sherlock once more why he absolutely loathed sentiment. 

Sherlock sighed deeply and looked around, trying to soak up more evidence and deduced the path of the murderer, but he was being distracted by that bloody feeling. 

_Grow up, you’ve always been alone, why is it so different now?_ , he asked to himself, but no answer came. All that he got was a wave from Lestrade to join him and Sergeant Donovan, who sneered at him as he approached them. He sneered right back. 

After explaining yet again to those ridiculous excuses for detectives what had happened to the young woman and why she hadn’t been killed there — ‘Look at her shoes! It’s obvious!’ — he began profiling the murderer. Wouldn’t be her fiancé, such a small engagement ring suggested lack of passion necessary to commit such a crime, and it wouldn’t be a love either, because the killer had to be at least forty pounds heavier than her in order to be able to move the body in the condition it was — the woman with whom the victim had an affair would most likely be of similar built. As he laid it all out, Sherlock observed as some of the Yarders watched him in skepticism and disbelief, and some of them in awe. He didn’t know which he found most ridiculous. 

Being done with this whole ordeal and finding he had given enough of his time to this tedious affair, Sherlock turned with a flare of his coat, leaving behind a dumbfounded team of incompetent detectives and an almost-solved murder that did not deserve one more second of his attention. Sherlock took out his mobile and sent a quick text to Lestrade, _Look into brother - SH_ , then moved to the outskirts of the woods, which was near an express way. He would never be able to hail a cab there. Sighing, Sherlock went for his mobile again. Perhaps he could call one— Never mind, a black car pulled over just as he was going through his contacts. Sherlock stared at it with an eyeroll and walked over to it. A young woman with brown hair and the usual black suit stepped out. 

‘Good evening, Mr Holmes,’ she said, eyes glued to her BlackBerry. 

‘Tell Mycroft I don’t need his help,’ Sherlock told her, giving her his best glare only to be ignored. She only hummed and moved over for him to enter the vehicle. With another sigh, Sherlock got into the car and kept to himself the whole way, because nothing made him feel more alone than to stand under Mycroft’s shadow and scrutiny, and he did not need that right now. 

* 

The next time Sherlock is standing over a body in woods, it’s a much more bloody affair. The murder this time did in fact occur within the current premises, and the victim was now a forty-year-old banker. He looked too old for his age, divorced — not his idea, judging by the ring on his left hand — and was the father of two toddlers. It was rather gruesome, as well. This head was open at the back, clearly shot through the jaw, as thought attempting — but failing, even Anderson noticed — to look like suicide. There were bruises all over his chest, none of them older than two hours prior to time of death, confirming that he hadn’t been kidnapped or anything of the sort. It was a crime of passion, that much was clear, but the culprit’s identity was still blurry to Sherlock. 

‘Any ideas?’ asked John, who stood right behind him, eyes dark as he stared at the body grimly. Sherlock stood and looked down at John. 

‘Several,’ Sherlock said. ‘Why are you making that face?’ he asked. 

‘What face? Oh, sad? Well, I’m sad that his children will grow up without a father, that’s all,’ John explained matter-of-factly, without judgement. He knew Sherlock felt things differently than other people and didn’t judge him for it. 

‘Ah,’ Sherlock nodded and went back to inspect the ground around the body. 

‘Is it so hard for a freak like you to understand human emotion?’ asked Donovan, clearly having heard their conversation. Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed. 

‘Don’t you have anything better to do than to bully Sherlock, Sergeant? Surely Anderson’s floors need scrubbing?’ said John sharply, catching both Donovan and Sherlock by surprise. The former walked away while shooting daggers at John, while the latter approached him with a frown. 

‘I do not need to be protected from her,’ Sherlock said. John chuckled. 

‘Yes, I know. But I don’t like her, so just give me that one, all right?’ he grinned, which shifted something inside Sherlock that he couldn’t name yet. Odd. 

It was a strange feeling, not being alone anymore. Sure, he’d always been surrounded by people, but he’d never not felt like didn’t belong. He had always been the black sheep, the odd one out, the freak, the weirdo, the kid who was too tall or too smart. But with John it was like he had a place. John accepted him and accommodated him in a way that was entirely novel to Sherlock, and the feeling was still fresh. 

He no longer went back home from a case to an empty flat and stomach. He no longer fell from exhaustion on the sofa and woke up two days later with no recollection of what had happened. 

Now John made sure Sherlock ate and rested. He made sure that he got at least one hour of sleep when they had a case on. Sherlock argued and fought, but he usually always complied, and the result was the sudden improvement of his brain capabilities. John made Sherlock eat at least tea and toast when he was focused on a case, and made sure to take them to a nice restaurant when they were done so they could eat properly. He took care of Sherlock in a way that had never been done before, not even when he was a young boy with an entire house staff at his disposal. 

John protected Sherlock from the thing that was more dangerous than anything to him: himself. He quieted the noise, made everything calmer. He was a calming, soothing presence in Sherlock’s life. And most of all, Sherlock never felt alone or unimportant when John was around. John was extraordinary. So when he asked to be angry at Donovan for being a bully, Sherlock could only smile in return. 

‘All right, I suppose you can have that one,’ he said with a wink, and John chuckled, but stopped himself before he burst into giggles at a crime scene. Again. 

John really was extraordinary.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are appreciated :)


End file.
